


Here & God-Forsaken Places

by arthurdentures



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Other, Post Reichenbach, implied John/Sherlock - Freeform, please don't hurt me because i'm terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthurdentures/pseuds/arthurdentures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like the end of days, like the vague, far-off Charn he remembered from bedtimes of his youth, Sherlock watched the sun crash around them, burning red red red, then not at all, the wind sweep up the pieces of dust and life and broken glass, the sky fizzle out into darkness as John looked at him, right through him, and kept walking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here & God-Forsaken Places

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: You know the story. No ownership, no money, no gold-plated helicopters or houses made of cotton candy for me. I mean no ill-intent by anything I say, write, or do, so please don't sue me. I also don't have a beta, I'm atrocious at spelling, and I couldn't Brit-Pick to save my life, but I hope you'll forgive me and I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

His hand hovered millimeters above the doorframe, wanting to touch it and not being able to. He hissed out an exhale when he saw the shadow of someone in the flat, his hand still lingering over the dark wood, hesitant, anxious. He hadn't touched anything but the floor since he came in, afraid he'd feel the emptiness of space like in his dreams, the co-mingling of hand and skin and solid object like in his best and worst dreams, always John, always here, never being able to touch anything, always going right through everything.

Waiting in the hall, his fingers buzzing with nervous electricity, he wondered if he deserved to be anything more than a ghost, wondered if his fingers and palms and limbs read the papers rather than synapses firing too quickly and too hotly in his brain. He put his hand on the door and stepped inside, careful to register, careful to register but not think too highly of the fact that his fingers hit the wood and didn't push through.

"John."

His breath was a whisper, barely there, parsel-tongue for the brokenhearted, and he felt his shoulders rise and fall with one word, one relinquished breath he'd been holding since the end, since the dawn of a new and unsure time.

John moved from the kitchen to the sitting room, a stack of post in his hands. He looked up from his filtering and his eyes caught the man in the doorway, gaunt and shaking and damp from rain in God-forsaken places, places God-forsaken because they weren't here.

"John, I-"

Like the end of days, like the vague, far-off Charn he remembered from bedtimes of his youth, Sherlock watched the sun crash around them, burning red red red, then not at all, the wind sweep up the pieces of dust and life and broken glass, the sky fizzle out into darkness as John looked at him, right through him, and kept walking.

 

 

*****

 

 

It felt too easy, the way he slid noiselessly, seamlessly back into a life he'd never forgotten but enjoyed too late, post-mortem, nostalgic and quick. John didn't speak to him, barely acknowledged his presence, but Sherlock stayed quiet and out of the way, retreating to his room when John broke dishes, pretending not to notice hearing the muffled, desperately controlled sobs in the pitch blackness of the bedroom when his weight dipped down into the bed, when his hand touched the skin of John's elbow and John tried to not melt into the touch of a long-absent hand.

He knew somewhere tight and drawn inside him that he was not a good man, knew it like he knew so many things, an almost staggering certainty to it, and he knew he deserved much more than broken dishes and nervous flinches, but the tightness coiled around that impenetrable black box of Certain Things began uncoiling, rusted links breaking off and not regenerating, and he wanted to be a good man, wanted it because John wanted it, needed it, deserved it so much more than broken words with too much feeling.

He didn't speak after those three initial words, didn't think he had any right to a voice. He planned his words, though; more carefully than he'd mapped out anything in his entire life, meticulous and precise and no room, yet plenty of room for the interjections, the questions he knew John would have but he didn't know if he could answer. At the table, his place bare and his knuckles white and cold and half moons in his palm, he grappled with yearning, ached to spill it all out, word by choken word, but the back of John's jumper at the sink steadied him, kept the bile and pleading behind his tongue but not out of the forefront of his mind. On the couch during Doctor Who he felt the physical weight of his words on his knees and thighs, felt the words forming behind his teeth and on the roof of his mouth, _I watched you that day at the gravesite and you weren't alone, you were never alone, I was, though, I needed to thank you_ , but Amy Pond was in trouble and he saw John move forward, reflexive, preparing for televised danger, so he bit them back and moved his hand to John's knee and pretended not to notice when it hit the couch cushion soon after and John was gone and his door was shut.

Days felt like years and hours felt like minutes, a strange stretch and shrink of depth and time perception, and in unknown bouts of silence he could feel John studying him with almost analytical eyes, as if he were on display or if he were a photograph. He would still when this happened, rigid and stone and inviting to be touched, but John would shake his head and close himself off again, dumping the kettle in the sink and leaving the dishes. Sherlock did the dishes now, though he didn't expect any praise from it. He expected nothing anymore, just wished for it with a hot-white flame kindled in his extremities.

 

 

*****

 

 

"John, I brought by-Oh, oh, my God."

Sherlock froze in the kitchen, his dressing gown wrinkled and bunched up around the sleeves. His eyes met hers and his hand stayed motionless above the sink, his half-eaten meal slowly, slowly dripping into the porcelain basin, the only sound in the room. He opened his mouth and she opened hers and John looked between them quickly, moving his gaze back to her. "Mrs. Hudson, are you okay?"

"Sh-Sh-" Her hands were trembling fiercely, one covering her mouth and the other reaching out for something to steady herself on. John caught her hand, his eyes wide and light with concern, the dark blonde of his eyelashes casting visible shadows on his cheeks even from where Sherlock could see him. He sat the old woman, nearly hysterical, down on the couch and was up, halfway to the kitchen, when Mrs. Hudson brought up a shaking finger and pointed it at Sherlock, right to his chest, like knives and a thousand splinters.

"Sh-Sherlock? You're al-al-alive?"

John's entire body tensed, pivoting slowly on the ball of his left foot. His face was set and ghastly white, sickness on hospital sheets, alabaster in winter, drawn and cold and almost dead. His eyes flashed a thousand different colors, greys and blues and all the shades between hope and disbelief, and his quiet voice nearly echoed and quaked in reverberating silence.

"You can see him, too?"

The solitary teacup, never enough food, the stares like stained glass at dawn, the quiet, the quiet, the quiet. It all rushed at Sherlock with a speed and ferocity so great he nearly toppled over.

John looked at him, eyes alight with words in a language he couldn't even speak, his fingers rolling along invisible lines at his sides, his mouth twisting and closing and opening again and the words were there, hanging like clouds and rain and smoke from too many cigarettes, _You're really here. I'm not crazy_ , but they were stuck behind his larynx so Sherlock moved forward, centimeters from John, and touched his shoulder, his face. _I am here_.

 _What if-_ , John's hand ghosted the air above Sherlock's shoulder, scared and nervous and waiting to wake up. His eyes--Sherlock would go absolutely crazy thinking about his eyes when he cried--but now they were two inches from his nose and he realized that in some ways, he missed him all wrong. He took hold of John's hand, fingers tight around his wrist, and pushed it onto his shoulder. Solid, whole, unmoving. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't waiting for it to end, wasn't prepared for John's hand to move through him like through smoke or steam. A choked noise came from the small opening in John's mouth; animalistic, primal, wounded and thrashing and meek, and he swallowed it down into his gut and closed his eyes.

"How long?"

"Three weeks."

The sound of his voice made them both jump and Mrs. Hudson excused herself unbeknownst to them, inching down the stairs in stealth. The words he'd been fighting for weeks came bubbling up and he tried to stop them, but some broke free, running down his lips and chin like a child's drooling. "John, I'm so sorry, I had to do it, I did. Thank you, I never said-"

He was silenced by John's eyes locking onto his face, splattering behind them like a Kubler Ross Model nobody had created yet, and his voice sounded dusty and croaking when he spoke. "I've been seeing you since. For-for a lot longer."

He wanted to tell him he saw him, too, in alleyways and elevators and train cars. But instead he smiled, crooked and real and sad.

"I want this to be real."

He wanted to tell him _Me, too, more than anything, I'm tired of dreaming and waking up with a start,_ but instead he smiled, crooked and real and sad, and he got the same smile back.

 

_  
_

_The End_


End file.
